The Year Mr. Dalek Stole Santa Claus
by Benjamin F. Elliott
Hello, boys and girls. You’d better sit down. I’m afraid I have some bad news. The Mr. Dalek story did not get finished this year. There were certain – problems.
You look glum. But all is not lost. You see – Mr. Dalek has had adventures you never heard about. I have one here that should interest you. Let’s go to a recent Christmas Eve …
- by Benjamin F. Elliott
It was Christmas Eve of a certain recent year when I came to the North Pole. I had received a mysterious invitation, telling me that my skills as a narrator would be needed. The North Pole is just like you imagine. Snow, ice, polar bears, and a crazy sign with directions to locations thousands of miles away. About half a mile east of this menagerie was Santa’s workshop. The workshop was finishing making all the toys and goodies for good little girls and boys. The elves were hard at work feeding Santa and the Reindeer so they would have the energy to make the arduous trip around the world.
I passed by the reindeer – Blitzen and the 7 lesser known chaps. In front of the classic eight was their leader, wearing a red nose taped to his plunger. Plunger? Good grief. Mr. Dalek was impersonating Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer and taking the lead on Santa’s sleigh!
‘Greetings, bipedal life form known as Tony,’ quipped Mr. Dalek. ‘Were my directions easy to follow?’
‘YOU invited me to the North Pole?’ I exclaimed, trying to make some sense of this situation without passing out from the thin air at the North Pole.
Mr. Dalek continued: ‘I need you to chronicle this adventure. I’m going to help Santa Claus bring lots of Christmas joy to people this year. And I need you to stay an impartial observer. You may be confused. And when you get confused, you tend to assume that I’ve betrayed all my allies. Usually because I have betrayed all my allies. But this time – I have a mission. Let me complete it. One more thing – put on the spacesuit Alex Kingston gave you.’
I reluctantly agreed to go along with Mr. Dalek’s request. How many chances would I have to travel in Santa’s sleigh? And to be fair, given how light the air can be up high, wearing a spacesuit made sense. I put on Alex’s old spacesuit. It was a struggle – I knew I should have gone to the tailor shop and get them to let the suit out from her size to my size.
‘Quick!’ hissed Mr. Dalek. ‘I didn’t exactly tell Santa that you were coming. Hide in the sleigh!’
So, here I am, a respected podcaster, hiding beneath the sack of gifts in Santa’s sleigh while the old fellow climbed into the driver’s seat of the sleigh. Santa turned on the traction control and activated the atmospheric bubble around the sleigh to protect him in flight. Maybe I did not need the spacesuit after all. Mr. Dalek and the reindeer started to run and we launched into the air!
‘Happy Christmas! Merry Christmas! Let’s go cheer some children of all ages!’ With this brief speech, Santa expected Rudolph to lead the sleigh on its appointed rounds.
Santa was not expecting Mr. Dalek to turn his head around and face the jolly old elf. ‘Santa Claus! We meet again! I’ve decided to change your flight plan a bit.’
Santa Claus, alarmed! ‘You’re not Rudolph! And the sleigh is seriously above its appointed weight. Tony – stop hiding in the back and come out here!’ How did Santa know I was in the sleigh? ‘Santa knows what all the bad girls and boys are up to!’ Oh dear.
Mr. Dalek spoke a little more: ‘It was a good choice to turn on the atmospheric bubble. We’re going higher than normal. This year we will be spending Christmas … on the Moon!’
So, Mr. Dalek led the reindeer and the sleigh on a rapid race through the stratosphere, into outer space, and up towards the moon. Santa Claus and I sat next to each other. Santa looked grumpy and furious. I wanted to crawl into a little ball so no one could find me.
We landed on the bright side of the Moon, where Mr. Dalek said we had fellow Christmas visitors to meet. The visitors approached in big, massive spaceships. The first ship opened – Cybermen! The second ship opened – Ice Warriors! The third ship opened – Draahvin! Well, I guess not all alien threats can be equally dire. And the fourth ship opened – Cuthulu and his children!
‘Welcome, my fellow forces of conquest. I, Mr. Dalek, have decided that the human celebration of Christmas should be open to the monsters as well this year. Why must we let these puny weaklings smile and celebrate and be merry? They are weak and meek. We are strong. The strong should get the parties and excitement. So here I am with presents for you all! Open the sack, Santa! This year the toys are going to the Naughty!’
Santa refused to participate, so I had to haul the sack of gifts to Mr. Dalek and his Felonious Fiends. Don’t they understand that my back aches? Why had Mr. Dalek betrayed me once again? Sure he betrayed me so many other times – oh. Feeling rather foolish, I handed over the sack of stuff.
It had been a while since I had gotten any toys from Santa. Too many years of being naughty, I guess. I expected shoes, cars, trucks, dolls, rubber duckies, board games, and the like. Instead, Santa’s sack was full of technology items. Ipods, Ipads, Kindles, Video Games, Blu-Ray Players, HDTVs, Robot Toys, Toys for the Robot Toys to play with, Flash Drives, and Gift Cards. THESE were the items in Santa’s sleigh! THESE TRAVESTIES were what the kids of today wanted for Christmas. Suddenly I didn’t feel so bad about Mr. Dalek giving this garbage over to alien invaders. I had to stifle a giggle when the Cyberleader revealed that an Ipad would triple his memory capacity.
The Christmas party went on for several days. It wasn’t like Santa, the reindeer, and I could get back to Earth without a navigator. Mr. Dalek and the monsters were partying heartily with the toys that should have gone to the good little girls and boys. All on the bright side of the moon, where humans could see us easily from the Earth.
Mr. Dalek came over to me. ‘On my signal, we all get in the sleigh with Santa and keep our heads down.’ I began to wonder if Mr. Dalek was being really, really, clever.
Sure enough, on the 28th of December, we saw the spaceships coming. An international fleet of ships had set out to rescue Santa and avenge the interrupted Christmas celebrations. The Americans had refurbished one of their NASA space shuttles. The Soviets launched a capsule. The English launched one of their swanky space rockets that they claimed for years that they never built. The Scottish launched a swinging fireball ship to recognize Hogmanay. Richard Dawkins launched a ship to try to claim that they were out to avenge the interrupted Solstice celebrations. All of those ships were about to reach the Moon, because Mr. Dalek had held the party where all Earth could see us.
‘Mr. Dalek, you betrayed us! I knew we should never trust a man!’ screamed the leader of the Draahvin. Honestly, the Draahvin had been unhappy for the full visit, just because their Doctor Who story was lost and they weren’t getting royalties from repeats, VHS titles, and DVD releases.
‘Oh no I didn’t!’ proclaimed Mr. Dalek, while motioning Santa and I towards the sleigh.
‘Oh yes you did!’ retorted the Draahvin, this time with the Cybermen agreeing with them.
‘Get into the sleigh before they tire of the Panto banter!’ yelled Santa. ‘I hate Panto myself. I leave it to my alternate identity Father Christmas!’
As we hid in the sleigh with its shields protecting us from angry aliens, I asked Santa about the identity issues. It seems that the original Saint Nicholas decided that the full world would be too hard to focus on, so he cracked his identity into all these regional variants, including Santa Claus and Father Christmas. I mentioned that this did not make sense since they were all still in one body, and Santa threatened to bury my whole city block in Coal, with a “from Tony” card attached to it.
The humans made short work of the aliens, because the humans just wanted Christmas more. Mr. Dalek tricked the humans into thinking that he had nothing to do with the hijack, but that he had manipulated the aliens to be sure the humans caught them. Santa’s sleigh was towed by the English rocket back to Earth.
I had to ask Mr. Dalek – why did you do this? Why spoil Christmas for humans? Why trap those aliens? Why have we gone through a full story without you exterminating anybody?
Mr. Dalek looked at me with a mischievous smile. Hold on – how can a Dalek smile? Benjamin, this doesn’t make sense. Benjamin? Well, he’s already written this, he won’t answer. Ok, I’ll just try to sound convincing. Mr. Dalek looked at me with a mischievous sm … sorry, I can’t do it. I’ll compromise – Mr. Dalek looked at me conspiratorially. You may be writing some of these stories, but as long as I am the narrator and I run the audio versions, I make the rules. So there.
‘All the aliens at the party have expressed disdain at the Dalek race. They have mocked my people. I wanted them to be humiliated. I wanted them to be crushed by humans with early 21st Century technology. So – lure them to the Moon. Give them lots of human trinkets. Have them partying for days so they are unprepared for the onslaught. It was very elegant.’
I pressed: ‘But what about me, Christmas, and Santa?’
‘Well,’ went Mr. Dalek, ‘Santa humiliated me one Christmas, so I wanted to get revenge. I needed you because I have trouble writing stories without fingers. Also – I am evil. I must make life difficult for as many people as possible. Think of all the humans who wanted to spend Christmas and the days afterward living their lives immersed in their electronic devices. Well, this year they had to interact with each other. How is that for pure malevolence?’
‘You do realize you just united the whole Earth for the first time. That mission to rescue Santa could lead to World Peace. The encounter with aliens could then lead to a joint space mission and humanity conquering the galaxy. So, you made life better for humanity, in the end.’ I couldn’t resist needling Mr. Dalek here.
‘There are species that need to be enslaved. Until the Daleks can get around to it, why not let the Humans enslave them first? And this way, humanity can be evil as well. As an agent of evil, I’m fine with this,’ said Mr. Dalek with smug satisfaction.
Well, I guess that wraps the story up. And I heard Santa exclaim, as we entered the Stratosphere: ‘This is too much. I’m taking a vacation. I’ll be in Bermuda tonight!’
Have a wonderful Christmas and holiday season, all of you. Mr. Dalek will be back, unless I’m very, very fortunate. And if you are part of the secret space missions to enslave the galaxy under the yoke of human oppression, do remember to get your spacesuits altered at your local tailor before leaving Earth – they can be very uncomfortable when they’re too tight. And to all, a good night.
THE END
The Year Mr. Dalek Stole Santa Claus
A Mr. Dalek Adventure
By Benjamin F. Elliott
A One Man From Manassas production for Staggering Stories
Saint Nicholas was a real person, and Santa Claus is just a reworking of him, so everything but the Doctor Who bits are fair use. Doctor Who is copyright the BBC, and we always appreciate their benevolence towards parodies and humourous fan productions.
All original material is copyright 2011.
